With all of the hype that alternative media has given the rollout of 5G networks little attention has been brought to the deleterious effects past generations of wireless technology have had on human health. When the FCC and International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection established exposure limits for radio frequency radiation in the 90s they based it on animal experiments conducted by the Navy in the 1980s in which a handful of monkeys and rats were exposed to 225 MHz, 1.3 GHz, and 5.8 GHz over short intervals not exceeding a few hours at most. The limits for maximum RF-EMF exposure the FCC set in 1996 were based on those 1980s studies of short term whole body exposure among animals that produced several assumptions that probably don’t hold water today including that tissue heating (i.e. thermal radiation) was the only possible biological effect of nonionizing radiation exposure from EMFs and thus chronic long term exposure to RF-EMFs could not damage DNA or break chemical bonds in the body or the brain where most exposure occurs. In their review published in Environmental Health, Yakymenko and colleagues find that the 14 assumptions that the FCC and ICNIRP established then do not hold true today. The National Toxicology Program rat experiments and mice experiments of whole body RFR exposure found dose dependent increases in cardiomyopathy and both benign and malignant tumors at whole body specific absorption rates below the 4 watts/kilogram threshold set by the the FCC and ICNIRP at radio frequency radiation levels of 900 to 1800 megahertz that are typical of cell phones. While the results of animal studies aren’t necessarily applicable to humans there is also a plethora of human research that suggests these assumptions are at best wishful thinking.
Reduces Male Fertility:An in vitro study (n = 34) found that EMF radiation from a cell phone in talking mode at a distance of 2.5 cm (1 inch) from the test samples reduced sperm motility and viability and increased oxidative stress in exposed cells but did not affect DNA integrity.
An observational study conducted at an infertility clinic between 2004-05 (n = 361) found that an increase in daily cell phone use (in hours per day) correlated with a decrease in sperm count, motility, viability, and normal morphology with men who don’t use cell phones having the highest sperm parameters while men who used cell phones 4 hours a day or more had the lowest sperm parameters. They also found that sperm parameters significantly varied within cell phone usage groups with participants using cell phones less than 4 hours per day having significantly higher mean motility, viability, and morphology than participants using cell phones at least 4 hours a day.
Another clinical observational study (n = 371) found that men who used their cell phones for longer periods of time daily had a lower proportion of rapid progressive motile sperm and a higher proportion of slow progressive motile sperm compared to men who had lower cell phone transmission duration daily.
Another clinical observational study (n = 304) conducted in an infertility clinic around roughly the same time period (2004 to 2006) found that the majority of men who don’t use cell phones (65.7%) had normal sperm parameters in respect to slow progressive motility, while the same was true for slightly over half of men who occasionally use cell phones (51.6%) and a minority of men who had frequently used cell phones over the last two years (35.4%). Only 16.7% of males who made frequent use of cell phones had normal semen morphology compared to 55.6% of males who did not use cell phones.
A prospective cohort study (n = 80) found, through a questionnaire and semen analysis, that men who talked on their cell phones for one hour per day or more while charging have higher rates of abnormal semen concentrations compared to men who did not and men who held their phones 50 cm (~19 and 11/16″) or less from their groin also had higher rates of abnormal semen concentrations.
Another in vitro study (n = 124), found that semen samples exposed to 850 megahertz of RF-EMF radiation for 60 minutes at a consistent distant of 10 cm (~4 inches) with an equivalent specific absorption rate of 1.46 Watts/Kilogram (well below the FCC “safe” threshold) had significantly lower sperm motility which they believe is caused by oxidative stress.
Another in vitro experiment found that sperm samples exposed to 1.8 gigahertz of RF-EMF radiation overnight at specific absorption rates of 0.5 to 1.5 watts/kilogram experienced significant reductions in vitality and motility at an SAR of 1 watt/kilogram. Motility decreased from 86% in the control group to 68% in the exposure group. Sperm cells exposed at a specific absorption rate of 1 watt/kilogram also had a significant increase in reactive oxygen species cells, causing oxidative stress, which increased in a dose dependent trajectory between the SARs of 1 to 4.3 watts/kilogram. When accounting for thermal effects, oxidative stress was found to occur even at a consistent temperature of 70 degrees fahrenheit. They also found a significant increase in DNA strand breaks at a specific absorption rate of 2.8 watts/kilogram.
Sleep DisturbanceIt is now abundantly evident that blue light from the screens of wireless devices inhibits your body’s ability to make melatonin disrupting the circadian rhythm and leading to possible insomnia.
Every additional year of cell phone use has been found to decrease the concentration of Beta Trace Protein, an enzyme the body uses to synthesize an endogenous sleep promoting hormone called prostaglandin D. The study in question suggests that ‘EMF emissions may down-regulate the synthesis of β-trace protein’ resulting in sleep disturbances.
Cancer RiskIARC classified radio-frequency radiation as a possible human carcinogen in 2011 based on the limited available literature reviewed by their working group at the time that mainly came from animal and occupational hazard studies with very little in the way of long term safety data. The very limited evidence available to the working group resulted in a class 2B designation, the weakest classification for possible carcinogens where there is inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans. Over a decade later the literature on the cancer risks of long term cell phone use is much more extensive.
A Systematic review of 11 case controlled studies (n = 17,516) found that continuous mobile phone use for 10 years or more is associated with a 1.44x higher odds of glioma compared to mobile phone use of any duration less than ten years. They also found a 1.46x higher odds of glioma for answering and making calls with cell phones exclusively on one hemisphere. Overall they found a 2.22x higher odds of glioma in long term mobile phone users who had used mobile phones for ten years or longer.
A meta-analysis of 22 case controlled studies(n = 48,452) that also evaluated studies by methodological quality found that in 12 of the studies which assessed the risk of brain tumors after a decade of continuous mobile phone use there was an overall 1.33x increase in the odds of any brain tumor. Of course, the industry funded studies which found no apparent elevated risk of brain tumors with indefinite mobile phone use had the highest risk of bias. The highest quality study found a 2.58x higher odds of any brain tumor after continuous mobile phone use for a decade or more.
A meta-analysis of 46 case controlled studies (n = 66,075) that also evaluated studies by risk of bias and methodological quality found that while the overall use of cellular phones was not associated with tumor risk in a random-effects meta-analysis a subgroup analysis of studies that used blinding during the interview portion revealed a slightly elevated risk of any brain tumor which was statistically significant in studies with high methodology quality (n = 17). Once again the industry funded studies were found to have the lowest methodological quality (e.g. no blinding in interviews and larger differences in response rates between cases and controls) and the highest risk of bias. A subgroup meta-analysis by cumulative call time revealed cell phone use exceeding 1,000 hours call time (i.e. 17 minutes per day over a decade) was associated with a 60% elevated risk of brain tumors.
Childhood developmentAs early as 2000 a UK Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones warned that children may be more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of electromagnetic fields from wireless phones than other demographics specifically because children are exposed to electromagnetic waves over their entire lifetime compared to the adults of the time who grew up without the ubiquity of wireless phones. They recommend restricting mobile phone use to adults.
“children are exposed to electromagnetic waves over a longer lifetime than adults and their nervous systems are in the process of development. As the conductivity of the children is higher due to higher moisture and ionic content than adults, and more than adults, children’s head absorbs a lot of RF energy”
Children also have thinner skulls than adults which means EMF radiation penetration into brain tissue will be deeper than it is in adults. Adults have an average skull thickness of 2mm while children have an average skull thickness of 0.5 mm at 5 years of age and 1 mm at 10 years of age.
An epidemiological survey (n = 6152) conducted among children from 39 schools while also collecting EMF exposure data from children asked to carry around personal radio-frequency exposimeters for 24 hours while using different wireless devices in different scenarios (n = 148) were able to model baseline and follow up specific absorption rates for adolescents finding that mean daily doses at follow up were higher than daily doses at baseline for all organs except the heart. Estimated mean daily doses for the whole brain were higher than the whole body and heart even at baseline and was especially high in the right temporal lobe. Other studies of this kind that considered whole body and brain exposure find similar results including in Spanish, Dutch and Swiss children and adolescents.
An epidemiological survey (n = 13,159), which drew participants and data from the larger Danish National Birth Cohort study (n = 101,032), found that, at 7 years of age, children with prenatal and/or postnatal exposure to cell phones ‘tended to have higher percentages of borderline or abnormal scores for emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity and peer problems.’ The highest odds of behavioral problems were observed in children who experienced both prenatal and postnatal cell phone exposure. Children with only prenatal exposure had a higher odds of developing behavioral problems than children with only postnatal exposure and the odds of behavioral problems increased with the frequency of daily calls. A replication (n = 28 745), published in the BMJ, found that children who experienced both prenatal and postnatal exposure to cellphone radiation had a higher odds of developing behavioral problems by 7 years of age compared to children not exposed to cell phone radiation with an adjusted effect size of 1.5.
A case control study conducted in South Korea among children younger than 15 years diagnosed at one of 14 hospitals (n = 5,966) found that children residing within 2 km of AM radio transmitters have a 2x higher odds of leukemia compared to children residing at least 20 km away from the nearest AM radio transmitter. They found that total radio frequency radiation exposure showed a borderline-significant positive trend with lymphocytic leukemia but did not find a dose response relation or a trend of increasing leukemia risk with decreasing distance from residential location to the nearest transmitter.